Please read and respond to the discussion-do not answer the questions again

Framing the Problem or Opportunity

Using the healthcare organization you selected in Week 1, identify a specific problem or opportunity that can best be addressed through the analysis of data. Your "area of opportunity" could fall into any functional area: people management, customer service, finance, operations, marketing, etc. The choice is yours, but the opportunity you identify must be a "significant" one, worthy of the attention of the CEO and the Board of Directors.

What is the critical problem or opportunity you will focus on?

Framing is an excellent decision procedure (Davenport & Kim, 1). The Critical problem at Adapthealth that I can see is that the Sales Representatives in our area are not comfortable selling our ventilator and the program we use for charting. Many are pushing the blame off on others and not taking ownership of their inability to deal with vents. I propose addressing this issue with one-on-one field training from a knowledgeable Respiratory Therapist (RT) with the sales representatives for six weeks.

The RT and sales representative will focus on all pulmonary and hospitals during the training. With knowledgeable sales representatives selling the ventilators with confidence can increase our sales tremendously. We can start the program in Tidewater, Virginia, and monitor the sales of vents before the training to after the training. We can then implement this to all other sales representatives and locations when we see the results.

What type of data will you need for your analysis? Is it patient data, demographic data, product data, or another type of data?

We would need to analyze the number of vents the sales representative received last month and then compare it to the numbers they received after the training. This would be considered product data. Sales Representatives get a commission on each vent they sell; I am sure that most sales representatives will be happy with the education.

How will you obtain this data? What challenges do you anticipate in accessing the data?

I would reach out to the Vice President of Sales, Mary Catherine. They run reports on all their sales representatives monthly. I would not anticipate any challenges as I have already built a relationship with Mary Catherine.

What is your hypothesis (prediction) of what the data will tell you?

The hypothesis is that the data will show that proper training for the sales representatives from an RT with ventilators will increase the sales of vents predicted at 30%. Once all sales representatives understand the product and are confident, they will surprise the doctors and earn their trust. When the data shows the increase, this is just the starting point because we will reach all Adapthealth sales representatives training (Bresnick,2). With an increase of 30% over the company our revenue will increase tremendously.

Maria